1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of projects involving the participation of several different entities. In particular the invention relates to the provision of a method and system to provide storage, manipulation, control and transferal of information relating to projects involving the participation of several different entities.
2. Description of the Related Technology
Projects requiring the cooperative efforts of team members provided by multiple commercial, governmental and non-governmental entities present a special problem with reporting. In such a situation, a specific project may be one of several under the control of or being tracked at the departmental level by each of the multiple entities. Similarly, each such department may be one of several under the control of or tracked at the division level for each entity, continuing in a hierarchical fashion to one responsible individual for each entity.
Thus, a WBS (or Work Breakdown Structure) may assign a specific individual to be responsible for each task to be performed in the subject project, such individual (and others) may report to a departmental supervisor, who in turn reports to a division supervisor and so forth until reaching the head of the commercial, governmental and non-governmental entity. Other data relating to a specific task may similarly be subject to a hierarchy of summarization, such as by resource codes and cost codes. Summarized across one project, the accumulation of all costs associated with various cost codes would yield the total cost for that one project. However, costs associated with one cost code may also be accumulated across all projects within a department, division or entire entity.
Enterprise management and reporting software, may be used to facilitate the coding and subsequent summarization by such code of all tasks of all projects under the control of or tracked by a specific commercial, governmental and non-governmental entity, this being the current state of prior art. However, while the subject project may be only one of many projects of this specific entity, it may also be one of a different set of projects under the control of, or tracked by, a different specific entity. And while a specific individual under the control of one entity may be responsible for each task to be performed in the subject project, it is typical that each of the other entities that are participating in the project may also have an individual from their organization responsible for the control or tracking of such task. Similarly, the cost code structure of one entity's enterprise may differ from that of another and each may have assigned its own resource and cost codes to the specific task. Each of these entities may desire the ability to summarize the resources or costs associated with that entity to that task and in relation to other projects under the control of or tracked by that entity.
Thus, like a family tree, it is possible to show all the descendents of two individuals or it is possible to show all the ancestors of any two individuals at a specific level, but not both. Enterprise management and reporting software, including enterprise scheduling software, is subject to this type of problem in that user defined codes assigned to various tasks or activities are typically based upon the hierarchical enterprise needs of only one master entity, while performance of the project almost always requires the cooperative efforts of at least two (and usually more) entities, each having differing hierarchical enterprise needs.
A further issue that is encountered in the provision of a multi-hierarchical reporting function is that reported information may be subject to access restrictions. Thus, certain common project data will be accessible to all users of the reporting system, but access to other project data, such as the other projects of a specific participant which may interact with the subject project, may be restricted.
Therefore, there exists a need for providing a multi-hierarchical data reporting system and method which address one or more of the foregoing issues.